Chris Rock Heads to ‘Fargo’ for Season 4, FX Reveals First Plot Details

It’s always nice to end the week with some good news, and this news is particularly awesome: Chris Rock is officially heading to Fargo for the fourth season of Noah Hawley’s acclaimed FX series. Although Season 4 won’t premiere until 2019, the network has revealed the first plot details and setting for the next installment in Hawley’s Coen brothers-inspired anthology series. TGIF, indeed.

Per Variety, the first Fargo Season 4 casting announcement was made today during FX’s Television Critics Association press tour panel. Chris Rock, who previously produced W. Kamau Bell’s Totally Biased series for the network, is the first actor to officially join the cast of Fargo. Season 4 of the acclaimed series is set in Kansas City, Missouri in 1950, and is described as a story about “immigration and assimilation and the things we do for money”:

(…) two criminal syndicates — one Italian, one African-American — have struck an uneasy peace. To cement their peace, the heads of both families have traded their eldest sons. Rock will play the head of one of the syndicates, who has surrendered his son to his enemy, and who must raise his son’s enemy as his own. But then the head of the Kansas City mafia goes into the hospital for routine surgery and dies — and everything changes.

It sounds like the plot structure for Season 4 will be similar to that of previous seasons, which examined interconnected crime narratives and how simple, illicit actions can have a dire — and sometimes darkly hilarious and surreal — ripple effect.

Hawley was previously uncertain if or when he might tackle a new season of Fargo, and FX execs were open to letting him return to the series when he felt he had a story worth telling. Hawley will once again serve as showrunner, writer and director, with Joel and Ethan Coen continuing as executive producers. In addition to Fargo, Hawley is also the showrunner, writer and executive producer of Legion, which recently concluded its second season and was picked up for a third.